great Venetian
map, known as the Camaldolese Chart of Fra Mauro, executed in the
convent of Murano just outside Venice, is not only the crowning specimen
of mediaeval draughtsmanship, but the scientific review of the Prince's
exploration. As Henry himself closes the middle age of exploration and
begins the modern, so this map, the picture and proof of his
discoveries, is not only the last of the older type of plan, but the
first of the new style--the style which applied the accurate and careful
methods of Portolano-drawing to a scheme of the whole world. It is the
first scientific atlas.

But its scale is too vast for anything of a detailed account: it
measures six feet four inches across, and in every part it is crammed
with detail, the work of three years of incessant labour (1457-9) from
Andrea Bianco and all the first coasters and draughtsmen of the time. In
general, there is an external carefulness as well as gorgeousness about
the workmanship; the coasts, especially in the Mediterranean and along
the west coast of Europe, would almost suit a modern Admiralty Chart,
while its notice, the first notice, of Prince Henry's African and
Atlantic discoveries is the special point of the whole work.

There is a certain disposition to exaggerate the size of rivers,
mountains, towns, and the whole proportion of things, as we get farther
away from the well-known ground of Europe; Russia and the north and
north-east of Asia are somewhat too large, but along the central belt,
it is fair to say that the whole of the country west of the Caspian is
thoroughly sound, the best thing yet done in any projection.

No one could look at Fra Mauro's map and fail to see at a glance a
picture of the Old World; and the more it is looked at, the more
reliable it will prove to be, by the side of all earlier essays in this
field. No one can look at the Arabic maps and their imitations in
mediaeval Christendom, whether conscious or unconscious (as in the
Spanish example of 1109), without despair. It is almost hopeless to try
and recognise in these anything of the shape, the proportions, or the
distribution of the parts of the world which are named, and which one
might almost fancy it was meant to represent at the time.

Place the map of 1459 by the side of the Hereford map of 1300 or of
Edrisi's scheme of 1130 (made at the Christian Court of Sicily), or in
fact beside any of the theoretical maps of the thousand years that had
gone to make the